


Thank You For The Venom

by InLoveAndSqualor



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-27
Updated: 2012-08-27
Packaged: 2017-11-13 01:15:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/497768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InLoveAndSqualor/pseuds/InLoveAndSqualor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Frank wakes up with a terrible hangover and little memory of the events of the night before...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thank You For The Venom

Frank woke up and groaned, blinking bleakly at the world through sleep blurred eyes. His tongue was a horrible thick carpet laying in his mouth and his limbs shrieked in protest as he moved them in that awkward way that waking from a deep restless sleep forced.

Grimacing he tried and failed to remember arriving back at his apartment, to his bed. He glanced over to his clock radio and winced, 2.42pm glowed sinisterly from it. He stared at it, at its nauseating green numbers, until he finally noticed the small book of matches resting nonchalantly on top. Frank reached over to retrieve them with numbness running over him, the dullness of someone that had only just arrived back into the world.

He opened the book dumbfounded and revealed a scrawled set of letters that spelled out an unsteady 'thank you' on the card above the missing row of matches, each had been snapped off and long since used.

'It... Must be important,' Frank thought hazily, turning the book around in his fingers. 'I mean... I kept it... Didn't I?' He realised, totally bemused.

The handwriting was unrecognisable, clearly hampered and impaired by the dumbed coordination of drink.

And still nothing was coming back as Frank threw off his sheets and looked down at himself, fully clothed, with what looked like mud stains peppering the knees and shins of the black jeans he was still wearing.

He remembered how he'd started the night, as he brushed off the flecks of dried dirt from his clothes, remembered arriving at a bar with Mikey and Ray, playing pool, downing tequilas as forfeits for missed shots.

Frank despaired as his head received an angry stabbing pain as penance for him getting out of his dishevelled bed and making his way unsteadily out into the kitchen, tucking the match book into his jeans pocket as he walked.

His keys lay glinting on the counter, bathed in the afternoon sun, change and crumpled notes surrounding them messily, where he must've emptied out his pockets the night before.

He filled his coffee maker with fresh grounds, the rich deep scent of it already reaching up to make him feel sick. He snapped it on and ran his fingers absentmindedly through his hair, trying to conjure up any more details he could find of last nights lost hours.

Pulling his mug from the cabinet overhead, he pictured himself at the bar with his friends, then at the pool table, and knew somehow he'd done terribly, he'd missed so many shots to start with that he'd then got too drunk to play any better.

Frank listened to the hot water bubbling and filtering through the coffee grounds, filling the small glass jug in the machine.

He remembered Ray doing trick shots to an uninterested audience of no one, he remembered the barmaid that couldn't be any more fed up with them making her cut more limes, or wipe away the grains of salt that tumbled off the wet crooks of their hands and littered the black sticky surface of the bar like stars in a night sky. 

Pouring the strong black coffee into his mug, the high sun of late afternoon bathing the side of his face in gentle heat as it crowded in through the many slits in his blinds, he even remembered clumsily inserting coins into the bars ancient cigarette machine and how he'd spent minutes grasping for memories in his drunken mind, like what brand of cigarettes he actually smoked.

He smiled at that, blowing away the ghostly trail of steam that rushed up from his mug and invaded the atmosphere gently. 

He raised his mug of coffee and took a luxuriant sip; just as the heat bit at his lips, the rich bitter taste hit his tongue, his phone vibrated idly in his jeans pocket and against his hip.

Placing down his mug he immediately missed the warmed ceramic under his hands as he pulled out his cell.

'Weird,' he thought dumbly looking through all the countless missed calls from the night before, all from Mikey and Ray, and then just two hours ago a single missed call from Gerard.

It occurred to him then that his phone might have some clue within it to the events of the night before, as he claimed back his mug and, with his free hand, searched through his texts.

It all seemed pretty unchanged from yesterday afternoon when he'd exchanged messages with his two friends arranging their night out. But as he started to access his sent messages he felt like he was close to remembering something and an awful anxiety hit the pit of his stomach and stubbornly settled there. He felt the panic of a man that knew that there was something terrible coming, he just didn't yet know what. 

And then there in horrible pixelated brilliance was his answer, a message to Gerard at 3.04am.

'Oh jesus..." He despaired.

 _I need to see you._ It read.

And sure enough, looking, Gerard had called him two minutes later.

Frank dropped his mug back down on the counter clumsily.

'I'm such a fucking idiot,' he thought glumly, ready to retreat back to his bed and pull the sheets right up over his head. Tell himself that yes he could do that and it would make whatever all this was go away.

But his poorly thought out plan was over before it had begun when the apartment's buzzer tore through his world and shredded his mind.

Walking heavily over to the door and holding his head, he pressed the entry button without thinking, even, to ask who was there. Just stood by the entry phone wondering when the world was going to be done attacking him.

And when the knock came, through the door and just feet from his head, he thought he might be sick; and yet still on his tortured autopilot he answered it.

"Wow," Gerard breathed sarcastically; standing nonchalant and cocky in Frank's doorway. The harsh light, of midday streaming through the windows in the hall and rushing to frame him, burnt into Frank's stinging retinas.

Gerard was surveying him quietly with glittering and amused eyes as he swarmed elegantly past Frank and into his apartment.

And as he pushed the door shut cautiously Frank wondered at how ridiculously refined Gerard could look on a Sunday afternoon, cigarette balanced precariously and coquettishly between his perfect lips. Gerard was bound to have been out drinking the night before, but you just wouldn't know it.

"Why aren't you answering your phone?" he enquired in a lazy tone.

Frank shrugged, in what he hoped was a neutral and noncommittal way.

"Just woke up..." Frank mumbled. "Say... Did we meet up last night?" He asked, inexplicably slightly scared of the answer.

Gerard laughed at that; a deep amused laugh that was to Frank totally unnerving.

"You mean you don't remember?" He smiled. And immediately Frank felt at a worrying disadvantage.

"Well..." Frank mumbled looking at the floor. "Not exactly," he smiled wryly to himself at his own weak deflection.

Gerard chuckled heartily walking over to the kitchen counter and pouring himself a coffee, dropping the still lit end of his cigarette into Frank's half empty mug, the resulting hiss thrown out into the room.

"Jesus Gerard..." Frank moaned gently, trying to rub away the clawing headache growing by the minute within him with a tired hand.

Gerard just flashed a smirk over in response and brought his mug of coffee to his upturned lips.

Frank fumbled in his pocket for the mysterious book of matches he'd found on his clock radio when he'd woken; told himself that if Gerard was going to be here he could at least be useful.

"What d'you think this means?" Frank asked holding open the empty book of matches out to Gerard so he could see the message scrawled across it.

"What?" Gerard scowled good-naturedly, squinting his eyes, peering closer, before pulling back and smirking.

"Nothing," he began as if explaining to a child, the glint of knowing exactly what Frank meant dancing across his eyes.

"It doesn't mean anything. It's an empty book of matches. The only thing that means is you chain-smoke when you drink and..." He grinned. "That you really should buy a goddamn lighter... I mean who actually uses matches?" He laughed.

"You know I meant the message on it," Frank sighed tartly, genuinely irritated, pocketing his memento of a night he'd still all but forgotten, noting for the first time as he did the name of a motel embossed in black across it's front.

A motel... Frank remembered a motel. Remembered checking in with his arm slung lazily around someone's shoulder. Remembered how it was the kind of place where you could pay by the hour. And knew with a touch of embarrassed regret that that was exactly what he'd done. 

Despite these new found memories he couldn't quite get to the person by his side, like his mind had buried the knowledge, packed it away for when his hangover had died down and he could possibly hope to deal with it.

"I went to a motel with someone..." Frank murmured, more to himself than Gerard.

"Sure you did," Gerard flashed back at him with a smile that was both brilliant and blank and gave nothing away.

And to Frank this felt so typical of their normal conversations, Gerard always had the upper hand, held some knowledge over him, was forever caught up in some private joke that Frank always felt he too should be in on.

"Look... I mean I don't wanna sound like... Unwelcoming and everything Gerard... But did you come over for some reason? It's just I've..." Frank trailed off. Did it sound stupid that he just wanted to be on his own and piece his head back together again?

Gerard beamed him a warm smile.

"No. No. I'm off... I just wanted to make sure you were good. You know, after last night," he said in deceivingly leisurely tones, placing his mug down next to Frank's and heading back towards Frank and the apartments door.

Frank nodded glumly, more than a little concerned by the hidden meaning he was sure were in those words; that, happily, Gerard knew Frank had done something last night that he definitely shouldn't feel _good_ about. 

Gerard stood by the door, his hand poised ready on the latch and, in a way Frank had barely seen in his friend, for a second it looked like he was unsure, considering his next move over and over. 

"Say... When you remember who you took to that motel last night... You let me know," he said with practiced nonchalance, his eyes emotionless yet searching and fixed on Frank's as he swung open the door.

And then just as Frank was mulling over why it was that Gerard would be so interested in who he'd taken back to that sleazy little motel room, his thoughts were interrupted by the soft, half open, lips that collided gently with his own. Stuttered as Gerard pulled away and shock hit, the memories of last night flooding back, last night with Gerard. Remembered the shameful joy he'd felt when his usual drunk message to Gerard had actually been answered with a call. Little flashes of them sitting downing whiskeys in the cramped booth of a dimly lit bar, sharing a cigarette outside under the city's starless nights sky languid ghosts of smoke hanging between them. Felt the blow of images of their bodies clashing violently in the night, a tangle of bodies in the fitting degradation of that cheap motel's room that Frank knew intoxicated he'd paid for. Felt them like being hit square in the jaw. Barely heard his door slam lightly shut with the memories of Gerard's groans echoing in his ears.

"Fuck," Frank sighed, his hand resting against the cool surface of the closed door; and yet couldn't help the smile that crawled resolutely across his features.

He remembered finding the empty book of matches scrawled with Gerard's drunken thanks left on the motels bed after he'd left.

Frank pulled his phone from his pocket and with the memory of warm lips pressed against his own and with hands that shook with an anxious excitement he called Gerard. Could hear faintly the ringing through the walls from down the hall.

"Yes," he heard down the receiver in smooth cool tones whilst his own heart drummed in his chest.

"You know... I think something's coming back to me," Frank said with an excited grin on his lips despite himself.

Hanging up he pulled down the latch on his door and left it ajar, walking back into the depths of his apartment; listening with quite anticipation to the footsteps of his friend echoing towards him back up the hall.


End file.
